For decades, if not centuries, hot dogs or other sausage type foodstuffs have been manually cooked upon grills or griddles or in frying pans. They are typically turned periodically by the cook so that they will be cooked evenly about their periphery and in their interior. In commercial restaurant operations it is desirable to minimize the manual cooking efforts in order to improve efficiency and reduce food service costs and yet it is also desirable to maintain or improve upon the quality of manually cooked food.
For this purpose there are a variety of single purpose or dedicated, hot dog cooking grills which perform well. One popular type of hot dog cooker and turner has a plurality of closely spaced, heated, metallic tubes which continuously rotate. Alternate tubes rotate in opposite directions of that the hot dogs continuously rotate in contact with the hot tubes.
Although such units operate effectively, they occupy valuable work space even when not in operation. Additionally they include self contained heating units which are a duplicative consumer of energy in a restaurant which already has a conventional griddle, such as is commonly used for grilling hamburgers and eggs. The addition of hot dog cooking equipment to an existing, efficiently planned restaurant operation is a particularly difficult problem because in such an operation each counter position and essentially all the space has been allocated for a particular use. None of this should be sacrificed to the addition of a dedicated hot dog cooker.
There is, therefore, a need for a hot dog turner which can permit the hot dogs to be cooked upon an existing griddle without necessitating manual turning. There is also a need for such a hot dog turner which will permit the cooked hot dogs to be kept warm upon the grill and yet will allow its motor drive unit to be easily detached with a simple motion and without requiring the hot portion of the turner to be touched with human hands. In this way the drive unit can be removed from the space it occupies during a time period of reduced sales so that the space it occupies can be utilized for the preparation of other food. It is also desirable that it can be very quickly and easily reinstalled upon the conventional grill without the need for any significant manual operations requiring any skilled manual dexterity.
There is, furthermore, a need for such a hot dog turner which has a separable food contacting portion which can be completely removed and washed in conventional dishwashing equipment for subsequent reuse.